Growing scourge of fly-tipping costs Londoners £8m in a year

Fly-tipping cost London taxpayers more than £8million last year, figures showed today.

Almost 200,000 instances of illegal rubbish dumping across the capital, a rate of 22 an hour, cost £4.3million to clear up, while £3.8million was spent trying to punish offenders.

The Countryside Alliance obtained the figures and raised fears that council cuts leading to fewer weekly bin collections, together with rising taxes on sending rubbish to landfill mean the problem is "likely to get worse".

Newham had most cases, 38,746, but did not reveal clean-up costs. Lewisham was next with 38,540, and spent £1.3million collecting and disposing of the rubbish. Hammersmith & Fulham had 30,894 instances with a £195,000 bill, while Kingston had fewest - just 243, costing £10,000 to put right.

Across London there were 6,201 successful prosecutions for fly-tipping and 371 fines but only £309,717 was recouped from offenders. Countryside Alliance chief executive Alice Barnard called on ministers to work more closely with local authorities to "tackle this scourge".

She said: "By raising landfill tax in the Budget and with more cuts coming to council budgets, this is a problem that is only likely to get worse.

"Londoners don't want their local areas blighted by unsightly and unsafe illegal waste. We need a co-ordinated plan to ensure people who fly-tip are caught and punished."

London Councils said they were "constantly fighting against fly-tippers, whose selfish actions blight the local community".

Across the country fly-tipping cost £40million last year, down from £100million in 2006/07. The environment department said it was "cracking down" with powers to seize vehicles, and considering making offenders do the clearing up.

A Defra spokeswoman said: "Fly-tipping is inexcusable - it's lazy, causes pollution, costs taxpayers millions of pounds a year to clear up and spoils people's enjoyment of our cities and iconic countryside.

"We're cracking down on these irresponsible criminals by introducing appropriate powers to seize vehicles, and looking at other penalties which might include offenders taking part in clean ups."